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Chapter 8Dil.1.8

De primo gradu amoris, quo diligit homo se propter se.

The Natural Root of Love

Love is a natural affection that rightly begins with self-preservation but must be ordered by divine command toward God and neighbor.

Love is a natural affection — one of four. The signs are known — there's no need to name them. What is natural, then, would surely be just: that one should serve the author of nature first of all. Hence it is also written that the first and greatest commandment is: You shall love the Lord your God, etc.✦ But since nature is more fragile and weaker, it is compelled by necessity itself to serve — necessity commanding it first. And there is a carnal love by which a person loves himself above all things for his own sake, as it is written: The animal comes first, then the spiritual.✦ It is not imposed by a commandment but implanted in nature: who has ever hated his own flesh?✦ But if that same love begins, as it tends to do, to grow more intense or more lavish — not content with the channel of necessity but overflowing into the fields of pleasure and seen to spread more widely — at once its excess is checked by the opposing commandment, when it is said: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.✦

Temperance and the Common Good

Self-love must be disciplined by temperance so that it becomes social, just, and ordered toward the common good.

Most justly so: you who share in nature should not be cut off from grace — especially that grace which is woven into nature itself. But if a person is weighed down — I don't mean by the need to help a brother's necessities, but by the urge to serve his pleasures — let that person discipline his own desires, if he doesn't want to become a transgressor. Indulge yourself as much as you like, as long as you remember that the same is owed equally to your neighbor. A bridle of temperance is placed on you, O human being, by the law of life and of discipline, so that you don't go chasing after your own cravings and be destroyed, and so that you don't end up serving the enemy of your soul with what belongs to nature's goodness — that is, serving your own lust. How much more justly and honorably do you share those things with a partner — that is, with your neighbor — than with an enemy? And indeed, if you turn away from your pleasures following the counsel of the Wise One, and — following the Apostle's teaching — are content with food and clothing, you won't be reluctant to hold back your love, for a little while, from the carnal desires that wage war against the soul. And surely, what you take away from the enemy of your soul, you won't be reluctant to share, I think, with a fellow sharer in nature.✦ Then your love will be both temperate and just, if what is taken away from your own pleasures is not refused to a brother's needs. In this way carnal love becomes both social and ordered toward the common good, since it is drawn out into what is shared.

Trusting God in Necessity

When generosity leads to personal lack, one should confidently seek God, who promises necessities to those who seek His kingdom first.

But if, while you share with your neighbor, even your own necessities perhaps run short, what will you do? What else, indeed, but that you ask with full confidence from the one who gives to all abundantly and does not reproach — who opens his hand and fills every creature with blessing?✦1 Surely there is no doubt that he is willingly present in our necessities, since he does not fail many even in their superfluities. Finally, he says: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."✦2 He promises of his own accord to give necessities, and superfluities to the one who restrains himself and loves his neighbor.3 This, in fact, is to seek first the kingdom of God: to implore, against the tyranny of sin, the power of chastity and sobriety — and to take up their yoke rather than allow sin to reign in your mortal body.✦4 Moreover, this too belongs to righteousness: with the one with whom you share a common nature, you should not keep the gift of that nature divided between you.5

Loving Neighbor in God

Perfect love of neighbor requires loving God first, since God is the source and ground of all love and the sustainer of nature itself.

Yet for love of neighbor to be truly perfect, God must be acknowledged as the ground of that love. Otherwise, how can anyone love their neighbor purely, if they do not love God? Moreover, the one who does not love God cannot love in God. God must therefore be loved first, so that in God your neighbor may also be loved. God makes even himself to be loved, for he is the one who makes all other good things as well. And this is how he does it. The one who created nature also protects it himself. For nature was created in such a way that it continually needs the protector who was also its creator — so that what could not exist through him alone cannot, without him, endure at all.

Tribulation and the Turn to God

God permits tribulations so that the self-centered soul, finding its own weakness, learns to call upon and honor God.

So that the creature may never, of course, be ignorant of itself, and therefore (God forbid) proudly arrogate to itself the benefits of the Creator, the same Founder wills that man be exercised by tribulations — with a deep and indeed wholesome design — so that when man has failed and God has come to help, while man is freed from God, God may be honored by man, as is fitting.6 For this is what he says: Call upon me in the day of tribulation; I will rescue you, and you will honor me.✦7 And so it comes about in this way: that a man who is driven by the flesh and the senses — one who had known how to love no one but himself — begins to love God as well, whether for his own sake or because, as he has often experienced, in God he can do all things, things that are indeed profitable to be able to do; and without him he can do nothing.✦8

Read the original Latin

Amor est affectio naturalis una de quatuor. Notae sunt: non opus est nominare. Quod ergo naturale est, justum quidem foret primo omnium auctori deservire naturae. Unde et dictum est primum et maximum mandatum: Diliges Dominum Deum tuum, etc. Sed quoniam natura fragilior atque infirmior est, ipsi primum imperante necessitate compellitur inservire. Et est amor carnalis, quo ante omnia homo diligit se ipsum propter se ipsum, sicut scriptum est: Prius quod animale, deinde quod spirituale. Nec praecepto indicitur, sed naturae inseritur: quis nempe carnem suam odio habuit? At vero si coeperit amor idem, ut assolet, proclivior esse, sive profusior, et necessitatis alveo minime contentus, campos etiam voluptatis exundans latius visus fuerit occupare; statim superfluitas obviante mandato cohibetur, cum dicitur: Diliges proximum tuum sicut te ipsum.

Justissime quidem, ut consors naturae non sit exsors et gratiae, illius praesertim gratiae, quae naturae insita est. Quod si gravatur homo fraternis, non dico necessitatibus subvenire, sed voluptatibus deservire; castiget ipse suas, si non vult esse transgressor. Quantum vult, sibi indulgeat; dum aeque et proximo tantumdem meminerit exhibendum. Frenum tibi temperantiae imponitur, o homo, ex lege vitae et disciplinae, ne post concupiscentias tuas eas, et pereas, ne de bonis naturae hosti servias animae, hoc est libidini. Quam justius atque honestius communicas illa consorti, id est proximo, quam hosti? Et quidem si ex Sapientis consilio a voluptatibus tuis averteris, et juxta doctrinam Apostoli victu vestituque contentus, paulisper suspendere non gravaris amorem tuum a carnalibus desideriis, quae militant adversus animam; sane quod subtrahis hosti animae tuae, consorti naturae puto non gravaberis impertiri. Tunc amor tuus et temperans erit, et justus, si quod propriis subtrahitur voluptatibus, fratris necessitatibus non negetur. Sic amor carnalis efficitur et socialis, cum in commune protrahitur.

Si autem dum communicas proximo, forte tibi defuerint etiam necessaria, quid facies? Quid enim, nisi ut cum omni fiducia postules ab eo qui dat omnibus affluenter, et non improperat; qui aperit manum suam, et implet omne animal benedictione? Dubium siquidem non est, quod adsit libenter in necessariis, qui plerisque et in superfluis non deest. Denique ait: Primum quaerite regnum Dei et justitiam ejus, et haec omnia adjicientur vobis. Sponte daturum se pollicetur necessaria, superflua restringenti, et proximum diligenti. Hoc quippe est primum quaerere regnum Dei, et adversus peccati implorare tyrannidem, pudicitiae potius ac sobrietatis subire jugum, quam regnare peccatum in tuo mortali corpore patiaris. Porro autem et hoc justitiae est, cum quo tibi est natura communis, naturae quoque cum eo munus non habere divisum.

Ut tamen perfecta justitia sit diligere proximum, Deum in causa haberi necesse est. Alioquin proximum pure diligere quomodo potest, qui in Deo non diligit? Porro in Deo diligere non potest, qui Deum non diligit. Oportet ergo Deum diligi prius, ut in Deo diligi possit et proximus. Facit ergo etiam se diligi Deus, qui et caetera bona facit. Facit autem sic. Qui naturam condidit, ipse et protegit. Nam et ita condita fuit, ut habeat jugiter necessarium protectorem, quem habuit et conditorem: ut quae nisi per ipsum non valuit esse, nec sine ipso valeat omnino subsistere.

Quod ne sane de se creatura ignoret, ac proinde sibi (quod absit) superbe arroget beneficia creatoris, vult hominem idem conditor alto quidem salubrique consilio tribulationibus exerceri: ut cum defecerit homo, et subvenerit Deus, dum homo liberatur a Deo, Deus ab homine, ut dignum est, honoretur. Hoc enim dicit: Invoca me in die tribulationis, eruam te, et honorificabis me. Fit itaque hoc tali modo, ut homo animalis et carnalis, qui praeter se neminem diligere noverat, etiam Deum vel propter se amare incipiat, quod in ipso nimirum, ut saepe expertus est, omnia possit, quae posse tamen prosit; et sine ipso possit nihil.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Deut.6.5;Matt.22.37 — And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Matt.22.37 — And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
  2. ↩1Cor.15.46 — But the spiritual is not first; rather, the natural comes first, and then the spiritual.
  3. ↩Eph.5.29 — For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church.
  4. ↩Lev.19.18;Matt.22.39 — You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. Matt.22.39 — And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
  5. ↩1Tim.6.8 — But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
  6. ↩Jas.1.5 — But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask from God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
  7. ↩Matt.6.33 — But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
  8. ↩Matt.11.30 — For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
  9. ↩Ps.49.15 — But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.
  10. ↩John.15.5 — I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who abides in me, and I in him, this one bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩The relative clauses echo James 1:5 (gives to all abundantly / does not reproach) and Psalm 144:16 / 145:16 (opens his hand / fills every creature). Candidate allusions pending Moses resolution.
  2. 2 ↩Direct quotation of Matthew 6:33 (Vulgate). Preserved as quoted Scripture.
  3. 3 ↩Sponte rendered 'of his own accord' (i.e., willingly, unprompted) rather than 'freely' to capture God's initiative in giving.
  4. 4 ↩Pudicitiae ac sobrietatis rendered 'chastity and sobriety' as virtues that oppose the tyranny of sin. The yoke metaphor (subire jugum) evokes Matthew 11:30.
  5. 5 ↩Munus naturae non habere divisum rendered 'not keep the gift of that nature divided' — the sense is that what God has given in common through our shared nature should be shared, not hoarded.
  6. 6 ↩The phrase 'dum homo liberatur a Deo' is rendered 'while man is freed from God' to preserve the surface Latin; the sense is 'while man is freed by God' (a Deo = ablative of agent). The translation preserves the ambiguity of the Latin construction.
  7. 7 ↩Quotation from Psalm 49:15 (Vulgate 50:15). Candidate scripture allusion; final resolution deferred to tx-08 Moses stage.
  8. 8 ↩'animalis et carnalis' rendered as 'driven by the flesh and the senses' to capture the devotional sense of a person governed by natural, unregenerate impulses, not merely biological animality.

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